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Records: the Language of Thought
'You So Need Some Education' There was momentum to create grammar and language schools in England well before the printing press brought accessibility to teaching materials. The Royal Company had vastly accelerated the development and spread of printing presses, but practically superceded them overnight (in England at least) with the development of magically-enhanced "[[Records: Book of Learning|'Books of Learning']]." The irony was that the Books of Learning (BoLs) was such a powerful tool that it actually created a wall against the development of an institution of education. A language-based BoL, for instance, did the teaching, even for the illiterate, starting with pictures where necessary and evolving into a pathway and conduit for lessons that whatever the subject of the book happened to be programmed to. In an afternoon of reading, one could go from illiterate in a given language, to completely fluent in reading and speech (though writing's eye-hand coordination would take practice). When the Plantagenet Crown mandated a compulsory education, it left potential educators in a pocket of turbulence, not necessarily knowing how to create a sustainable school in their area that met the minimum requirements. Then there were arguments over things like accepted curriculum, standards and practices, certifications, licenses, access to BoLs, tax rates and funding until the details were hammered out. BoLs were non-trivial to produce, so how many could be made? How did one structure a class around that type of teaching aide? Could they use one BoL for a school and rotate students through, bit by bit – or was it smarter to go one student at a time and crank out fully certified students individually instead of by groups? 'The Rise of the Schools' One school, for instance, would be founded by the Guild of the Holy Trinity – now riding a popular high not only with Church reformation, but access to actual healing miracles. In their mission to Do Good, they elected to found a school at the south porch of St Peter's church, Wisbech. The Wisbech Grammar School was among dozens that were part of the dialogue of how to create a fully-functional educational system essentially overnight. The BoLs weren't just in short supply, there was also the matter of what lessons they taught. There were a dozen BoLs now "in the wild," and most of those were used for training people into official functions, either in the Royal Household directly, or into some function of government service. For those few that were public access, there were fistfights over access – and eventually fistfights over the "greater meaning of the lessons." 'Updating the Curriculum' The Books of Learning were awesome tools already, pushing London and Bordeaux alike into the future. Schools like Wisbech, however, almost didn't happen. Why bother to open a school when the part-time teaching of the RANP out of the Savoy Palace taught so many already? In this case, the RANP intervened to push Wisbech to fruition, promising access to Books of Learning of their own. That, in turn, pushed attention back to the curriculum itself. 'Language, weaponized' The Books of Learning had started primarily to teach literacy. In London, that was a toss-up, but the major language uptown was French. Playing on nationalism, the pro-English had some purchase, but even the law promoting Engish was written in French. Then there was language of government, which was often a form pidgeon Latin. The BoLs, in turn, became a subject of hot controversy as to what language they were teaching, as people were learning from them, and where the Books went, England went. In London, English became the primary and French a secondary, an elective to throw in. Given the French market, that elective was usually selected. Then, oh yes, Latin as the third option, just to sound smart when speaking to the RANP. It was an inverse of that Bordeaux, with English as the secondary/elective given the connection back to England. Latin was less popular, but the RANP (if not the local parlement) made it consideration for many. Where did this leave the other vernaculars? Already, red flags were raised as speakers of Welsh, Cornish and Breton saw the future and the death of their culture. This was particularly important to the local leadership as they'd actually read the fine print on the Plantagenet's policy of political autonomy based cultural metrics. The major metric was language. 'Grammar and Vocabulary... adapted' What did this mean? This meant Cornwall and Wales got Cornish and Welsh primaries, with English/French secondaries. The same went for Breton. Not granting those BoL efforts meant a perception that the RANP was going to try and fade them out of existence, playing to the same type of fears used in England that France was going to invade and stamp out the English language. Prince Richard thought that ridiculous. English cuisine, maybe, but not the English language. 'The Evolution of the RANP-led Curriculum' The Books of Learning subjects were growing, some intended for low-level and some were more advanced. For schools like the upcoming Wisbech, the Arithmetic would become part of the cumpulsory curriculum. Others were trade-school or college-level classes. 'Arithmetic and Mathematical Notation' The BoLs were expanded beyond reading and writing to arithmetic. The most fundamental change was the introduction of a new notation for mathematics. Already hinted at two years ago in the RANP's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (and related), this was another example of global import-export, with credit where it was due. The new mathematical notation of Hindu-Arabic numerals was not actually all that new, but had yet to make to England. While the RANP had already incorporated this in their Treatises, most didn’t understand the squiggles until they looked at the footnotes. This streamlined system was the future, in particular algebra, but also applied to arithmetic (number theory), Geometry and Mathematical analysis. Now, with the concepts conveyed by the infinite patience and near-instant efficiency of the BoLs, even the math-phobic were overnight masters of math. 'Advanced Curriculum: Tools for Analysis and Calculation' The RANP had essentially invented Symbolic Logic, and were now releasing that to the general public. The idea was to assist in the fight against ignorance in general, and was nearly a form of math in it's notation, but strictly a method of problem deduction. The method even touched on the principles of Semiotics, including Semantics, Syntactics and especially Pragmatics. The upside was that people, in general, got smarter. The downside was that there was a spike in the phenomena of complex confirmation bias. 'Advanced Curriculum: The Rules of Argument and Debate' This was intended on standardizing the RANP's peer review process. Part of standardizing it included keeping it civil – which it often wasn't. There was a realization that it was also desperately needed down the street from the Savoy Palace at Westminster (at least during Parliament). The Rules were significant everywhere. There was a touch of rhetoric guidance to it (persuasion), but largely it was pointing out logical fallacies and admonishing not to use them (argument), as well as suggested structure for the presentation of positions and supporting evidence and methods to prevent devolution of the argument into combat. Over the next 20 years, The Rules would go beyond the scientific realm to guide formal legislative (parliamentary) and judicial argumentation as well. 'Advanced Curriculum: Methods for Complex Calculation' Once the fundamentals of numerals were solid, the RANP introduced a modified abacus system, using arabic numerals, that had both a decimal and zero function. Importantly, it was possible to do far more than just count. Using an evolution of the Chinese Suanpan system, it was possible to efficiently execute multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, square root and cube root operations at high speed. This “English abacus” system was an incredible improvement over tally stick techniques previously used (the same memory sticks that would burn down the Houses of Parliament in Alt-U 1826). Abacus-trained accountants and mathematicians would soon be in demand around western Europe. Category:Hall of Records Category:1379